Blue Steel

On her first day of active duty, rookie NY cop Megan Turner (Curtis) surprises a supermarket robber and blows him away. Suspended for shooting an unarmed suspect (his gun has mysteriously disappeared), Megan is later seducedby charming commodities-broker Eugene Hunt (Silver). Then dead bodies start turning up all over town, killed with bullets fired from her gun and etched with her name. Detective Nick Mann (Brown) takes Megan under his wing, but even when Hunt virtually confesses to the crimes, the disturbing cat-and-mouse games have just begun. Curtis gives her most complex performance to date as the reckless Megan, whose obsessive behaviour and over-reactions have more to do with turning the tables on violent men than balancing the scales of justice. Short on plausibility but preserving the psycho-sexual ambiguities throughout, Bigelow's seductively stylish, wildy fetishistic thriller is proof that a woman can enter a traditionally male world and, like Megan, beat men at their own game.